PHOENIX – Even Milwaukee Brewers General Manager Doug Melvin can’t escape the injury bug that has stung his club this spring.

Melvin spent three hours in the emergency room Wednesday night after he was stung by an Arizona bark scorpion inside his spring-training condominium.

Melvin said he was eating dinner with his wife when they saw a bug on the floor. He reached down with a tissue to pick up what he thought was a spider and was stung on his left middle finger. He said his hand started swelling almost immediately and he headed for a hospital.

“I got nervous when all of the numbness started getting up in the shoulder area,” Melvin told MLB.com. “You think, ‘Can this thing go to your heart?’ They said you can lose your breathing; your vision can be a problem. None of that happened to me.”

Melvin was back at the team complex Thursday, where he could get back to work dealing with the team’s rash of injuries, including Aramis Ramirez’s strained left knee, Corey Hart’s recovery from right knee surgery, Mat Gamel’s torn right ACL and infielder Jeff Bianchi’s strained groin among them.

Should anyone on the club get stung by a scorpion, as former Brewers pitcher Zach Braddock was in 2011, Melvin will be ready.

“I didn’t know anything about (them) — I do now,” Melvin said.

 


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